How success cast its spell on Harry Potter star

Emma Watson has told of her shock at discovering she was a multi-millionairess
thanks to her role as Hermione in the Harry Potter films.

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Emma Watson photographed by Mario Testino for the December 2010 edition of Vogue.Photo: MARIO TESTINO/VOGUE

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Emma Watson, May 2010 Photo: GETTY

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Emma Watson models Burberry Photo: PA

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Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Daniel RadcliffePhoto: GEOFF PUGH

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Daniel Radcliffe, left, Rupert Grint, center, and Emma Watson in a scene from 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.'

By Victoria Ward

1:07AM GMT 01 Nov 2010

She was 17 or 18 when her father sat her down for the “money conversation”. Until then she had been living on an allowance of just £50 a week. “By the third or fourth film, the money was starting to get serious,” she said. “I had no idea. I felt sick, very emotional.”

The actress, 20, who was cast in Harry Potter at the age of nine, confessed to being “straight and boring” in an interview with the December issue of Vogue magazine.

She has barely touched her estimated £20 million fortune, for which she was named Hollywood’s highest paid female in Vanity Fair earlier this year. She chose instead to live in student digs while studying at Brown University in Rhode Island.

It is such stoic self control that led her to ban herself from reading the tabloids.

“There’s tons that’s not very nice and I’m very, very self critical, so it was like a drug for me,” she said.

Watson told how she decided to experiment with her new elfin hairdo after being released from her contract, which banned her from wearing heavy make-up or getting her ears pierced during the Harry Potter shooting schedule.